Learning/rebuilding from my epic fail

after asking for Matts`s permission I have a small question. I had been dosing kalwasser to my 650 gallon system and struggling to figure out how and what to dose? I decided to add a calcium reactor to try to make my life a little simpler. It had been recommended that I continue dosing and subsequently make adjustments after the addition of my reactor. My alk shot up to 10.58 so I was advised to reduce it to around 8 before considering raising my calcium which went from 440 to 350. Should i strengthen my co2 as I see my alkalinity going down or should I wait till my alk is close to 8 to make any kind of intervention? Should I rely on my kalkasswer or more on the reactor to adjust the kalk? Thanks and great pics to envy you.
 
I think the first thing you need to do (if you haven't already done this) is establish a base dose of kalk which is constant and never changing. Once you have your mix of water to Kalk (and vinegar, if you use that in your mix) and the same amount is dosed all the time, you can then start to play with the calcium reactor.
You can't have these two variables- the Kalk dose and the ca reactor going simultaneously if you are trying to adjust both.. It just won't work. You'll never get stability.
Do you have a base dose of Kalk that you dose on a regular basis? And if so what is the mix and dosage. And how do you dose the Kalk?
 
I was dosing approx 4 litres a day from 10 am to 7 pm and reduced this to 2 litres a day as per expert advice. Chamoer Doser. Recipe 100 ml kalkwasser with 1 cup of vinegar in 18l ro water. Co2 6.77 in Deltec 4' reactor.
 
I would monitor calcium and alk and add a calcium supplement as needed to maintain around 420ppm while the alk goes down to around 8. Once calcium and all are where you want them, begin to turn up the ca reactor slightly to stop the downward alk drift.
Continue with the Kalk dose that you have been doing but I would suggest dosing it overnight, not during the day. This way the naturally lower ph during the night will be slightly offset by the high ph of the Kalk..
 
renevilleneuve said:
Should I do this even with reverse refugium?
Click to expand...

I would say yes because even with the reverse fuge, the ph is still probably lower over night. There is a greater number of corals in darkness at night than there is algea in darkness during the day.. I think..
 
Well.. A little update.
It seems that over the past few weeks I have been doing more learning than rebuilding..
Since my last post a few funky things have happened - one easy to deal with concerning ca/alk/mag and another concerning nutrients which is ongoing.
I was noticing very high mag numbers and a relatively low alk with my ca reactor running normally, calcium was also in the high side. Ca-450 mag- 1700 alk-6.5.
To fix this, I began adding small doses of the alk half of a two part dosing solution. Twice a day I added just enough to get alk up to 7. After a week or so, with my ca reactor still working but NOT adjusted at all, the ca is down to 420 and mag 1480. I'll keep dosing this for a little longer to bring down mag a little further and then I'll stop the dosing and increase the ca reactor a bit.
The nutrient issue is a bit more complex and I'll get to that in a bit..
 
Good Luck Matt, don't get too worried about the low Alk number though. I can't keep mine above 7 to save my life, and many amazing tanks, like Andrew Grahams tank(RIP) had a hard time keeping the Alk above 6. Corals grow well regardless.
 
Thanks, Matt. It wasn't so much the alk level that was worrying me, it was its relation to the high mag and calcium.
I just wanted to rebalance the parameters.
 
1700 is definitely high, when I raised my Mg to 1800 a while back for Bryopsis I lost some sensitive fish(mainly Anthias) but the 1480 isn't too bad. Do you have Magnesium granules in the Ca reactor?
 
Well, interesting you mention bryopsis. This segues nicely to my nutrient story.
As my thread chronicles, I have been watching n and p and manipulating them a bit using biopellets and a mix of cano3 and carbohydrates. When p disappeared, I stopped the cano3/honey/vodka/vinegar and relied on the mix of aio/ecobac+ pellets as the n and p were staying around 2ppm n and .03 ish p.
Well, as I began adding fish to the system and adding more and more food, my nutrient began to drop! I could not get a reading for n or p. Some of my new acros were getting more and more pale and I even lost a couple. I was up to 3 handfulls of frozen food a day- I'm talking 30- yes 30 cubes of frozen food a day and I couldn't get a nutrient reading. This happening while hair algea, red and green slime and bryopsis was growing in my frag system and some bryopsis in the dt.
So finally, I just removed all of the pellets. Clearly the dsb and cheato- as well as every other algea in the system was absorbing all the n and p.
Then!... Last weekend, a bubble tip anemone I had in a frag tank got sucked into and shredded by a power head and the whole system went cloudy.
I added some carbon and a couple days later I added carbon again and it cleared a bit but ever since, the tank will not clear. I can only assume that I now have an algea bloom in the water.
I tested last night and got .25 n and .05 p. Perfectly fine numbers but my tank is still cloudy and my corals are still pale.
So.. I have now turned off all the lights and will leave the tank blacked out for 48 hours...
I'm not sure if this will stop the algea bloom. I'll see what happens when I turn the lights back on on Wednesday morning..
I'm wondering how dramatically the nutrients will jump after the lights have been off 48 hours.. Hopefully the dsb will do some overtime. I'll reduce food for the next two days as well..
So, going forward, I will try to rely on cheato and dsb for nutrient control and add pellets if necessary down the road.
But despite having a mag of 1700+, the bryopsis didn't care at all, it just kept growing.
So, I obviously have no balance in the system in terms of nutrient control at the moment..
I guess we'll see what happens next...
 
Sorry to hear of your troubles, your SPS were looking great in that last round of photos, maybe a bit pale like the SSC, but still looking healthy and great PE.

reefmutt said:
So, going forward, I will try to rely on cheato and dsb for nutrient control and add pellets if necessary down the road.
Click to expand...

This sounds like a good plain. At one point on my 120 I had a DSB, Chaeto, and pellets, and eventually I got rid of the DSB and Chaeto and relied on the pellets and strong skimming. Hopefully once you get the lights back on and straighten out the source of your issues, things will stabilize. Even seemingly without nutrients, bryopisis, cyano etc. can seem to hold on forever. Once you get the parameters sorted, try and leave it there, eventually the algae will consume what it is eating and then go away assuming your parameters are in the ideal zone, just takes a ton of patience.
 
Just know this: Bryopsis is of the Devil himself and in my experience its has nothing to do with your overall nutrient situation. It feeds itself on the souls of the fish in your tank, your family, and anyone who comes near the tank. It will disappear for months only to resurface when you least expect it and when nutrient levels are spot on, and nothing seems to eat it reliably. Buy a mess of blue legged and red legged hermits and emerald crabs and carpet bomb it is the only way I've been able to knock it out for a while. Im down to the final patches of a recent outbreak myself, nothing too bad but I never thought algae would make me angry. Good luck!
 
reefmutt said:
Well, interesting you mention bryopsis. This segues nicely to my nutrient story.
As my thread chronicles, I have been watching n and p and manipulating them a bit using biopellets and a mix of cano3 and carbohydrates. When p disappeared, I stopped the cano3/honey/vodka/vinegar and relied on the mix of aio/ecobac+ pellets as the n and p were staying around 2ppm n and .03 ish p.
Well, as I began adding fish to the system and adding more and more food, my nutrient began to drop! I could not get a reading for n or p. Some of my new acros were getting more and more pale and I even lost a couple. I was up to 3 handfulls of frozen food a day- I'm talking 30- yes 30 cubes of frozen food a day and I couldn't get a nutrient reading. This happening while hair algea, red and green slime and bryopsis was growing in my frag system and some bryopsis in the dt.
So finally, I just removed all of the pellets. Clearly the dsb and cheato- as well as every other algea in the system was absorbing all the n and p.
Then!... Last weekend, a bubble tip anemone I had in a frag tank got sucked into and shredded by a power head and the whole system went cloudy.
I added some carbon and a couple days later I added carbon again and it cleared a bit but ever since, the tank will not clear. I can only assume that I now have an algea bloom in the water.
I tested last night and got .25 n and .05 p. Perfectly fine numbers but my tank is still cloudy and my corals are still pale.
So.. I have now turned off all the lights and will leave the tank blacked out for 48 hours...
I'm not sure if this will stop the algea bloom. I'll see what happens when I turn the lights back on on Wednesday morning..
I'm wondering how dramatically the nutrients will jump after the lights have been off 48 hours.. Hopefully the dsb will do some overtime. I'll reduce food for the next two days as well..
So, going forward, I will try to rely on cheato and dsb for nutrient control and add pellets if necessary down the road.
But despite having a mag of 1700+, the bryopsis didn't care at all, it just kept growing.
So, I obviously have no balance in the system in terms of nutrient control at the moment..
I guess we'll see what happens next...
Click to expand...

Welcome to the club, 2 weeks ago my n was 1ppm and my p was .05 which is right at my target number I thought great. the next week it had risen a little n 2ppm and p .08. This week n is 8ppm and p is .17. I cant seem to find that sweet spot... Still searching...
 
Matt, Jordan, thanks. I've heard such horror stories about bryopsis... I've never had it in a tank before.. I'll start dealing with manually once I turn the light back on..

Chris, what are you nutrient control methods, atm?

Here's a shot of my tank water vs freshly mixed salt water. This is after new carbon was added last night and 36 hours in the dark.. Tank water in the left, obviously.. You can see the colour of the water.. I have the skimmer wet skimming as well..



So here's a little video of my two gyres running against each other.. With food flying around. This is a 53 inch wide tank with the gyres running at pulse mode but only 50%.

Crap.. I don't know why the vid won't work..
 
<embed width="600" height="361" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullscreen="true" allowNetworking="all" wmode="transparent" src="http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf" flashvars="file=http%3A%2F%2Fvid909.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fac292%2Freefmutt%2FFCA79A32-0123-455D-80B2-4007813C6860_zpsexntc53n.mp4&title=">

To embed future videos; on the PB page that has the video, look on RHS where it says SHARE LINKS, click on row that says HTML and simply paste that code into your post. :)
 
Test.. Here's a lousy quality video of my old tank..
<embed width="600" height="361" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullscreen="true" allowNetworking="all" wmode="transparent" src="http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf" flashvars="file=http%3A%2F%2Fvid909.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fac292%2Freefmutt%2FMVI_0148.mp4"><embed width="600" height="361" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullscreen="true" allowNetworking="all" wmode="transparent" src="http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf" flashvars="file=http%3A%2F%2Fvid909.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fac292%2Freefmutt%2FMVI_0148.mp4">
 
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